ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar 2015
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Old Style
November 14
Friday
New Style
November 27
26th Week after Pentecost. Tone 8.
Fast Day.
Wine and oil allowed.

Совершается служба с полиелеемHoly and All-Praised Apostle Philip (ca. 81-96).

St. Justinian the Emperor (565) and his wife St. Theodora (548). St. Gregory Palamas, archbishop of Thessalonica (1360). St. Philip, founder of Irap Monastery (Novgorod) (1527). Repose of St. Alexander Nevsky (Alexis in schema), great prince of Novgorod (1263).

New Hieromartyr Aristarchus (Zaglodin-Kokorev), hieromonk of St. Nicholas Peshnosha Monastery (Moscow) (1937).

St. Dyfrig, bishop in Hereford and Gwent, hermit, of Bardsey Island (ca. 550). St. Malo of Brittany (7th c.). Virgin Martyrs of Emesa (Syria) (779). St. Alberik, bishop of Utrecht (784). St. Fantinus the Younger, of Calabria (ca. 1000). New Martyr Panteleimon the Youth, of Asia Minor. New Martyr Constantine of Hydra, at Rhodes (1800).

Repose of Archimandrite Lazarus (Moore) of Eagle River, Alaska (1992).

Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse

St. Theophan the Recluse

Friday. [II Thess. 3:6-18; Luke 13:31-35]

   Behold, your house is left unto you desolate, the Lord said about Jerusalem. This means that there is a measure to God’s longsuffering. God’s mercy is ready to be eternally patient, awaiting good; but what should He do when we reach such disorder that helping us is pointless? This is why we are abandoned. So it will be in eternity as well. Everyone says, “God’s mercy will not allow people to be eternally outcast.” It does not want this; but what can one do with those who are filled with evil and do not want to correct themselves? They put themselves beyond the limits of God’s mercy, and are left there because they do not want to leave. Spiritualists have invented a great number of reincarnations as a means for cleansing sinners. But one who is defiled by sins in one incarnation may be the same in ten others, and then without end. As there is progress in good, so is there progress in evil. On the earth we see people embittered in evil—they could remain this way beyond the earth, and then forever. When the end to everything comes, and it will inevitably come, where is one to put those who are embittered in evil? Of course somewhere outside of the bright region determined for those who worked on themselves, for the cleansing of their impurities. This is hell! Would those who did not improve under the best of circumstances really improve under the worst? And if not, this is eternal hell! It is not God who is guilty of hell and the eternal torments in it, but sinners themselves. If there were no unrepentant sinners, there would be no hell. The Lord very much desires for there to be no sinners; it is for this that He came to the earth. If He desires sinlessness, this means, that He desires that nobody fall into eternal torments. Everything depends upon us. Let us agree and destroy hell with sinlessness. The Lord will be glad of this; He revealed hell so that everyone would be careful not to end up there.

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